


The Old 5' To 3' Routine

by InsomniaJuice



Category: Prototype (Video Games), Prototype 2
Genre: Alex learns to human, Angst?, Fluff & comfort, Gen, Gentek, Prototype 2009, [PROTOTYPE] - Freeform, blacklight - Freeform, fix-it fics, might expand later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:27:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23224768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsomniaJuice/pseuds/InsomniaJuice
Summary: Set after the events of [PROTOTYPE 2] as a sort of continuation and fix-it to the game ending.Featuring a very confused and sad Alex and his exasperated sister Dana.What could two idiots get up to when placed among miles of American midwest wilderness? Nothing too destructive right??Wrong.
Comments: 38
Kudos: 75





	1. Sushi

The restaurant was quite busy by the time they got off the cab; white hot steam rose in swirls from stove tops, faint hit songs were playing over the clamour and chatter of the crowd, a warm scent beckoned Dana and her hungry stomach to step out of the December rain and into the cozy little place. She hesitated, turned to look at the thing that wore her brother’s skin, and pulled the scarf up to cover more of her neck.

“C’mon.” She said through gritted, clattering teeth, “We’re here.”

Dana led the way into the restaurant, and watched her brother clumsily hunker down in order not to hit his head against the door frame. He brought the smell of rain and the cold, howling wind inside with him before the door swung shut. Dana caught his brightly glinting eyes scanning the patrons around him, the shadow from the hood and his dark curls obscuring his face. He slowly took in the environment as Dana signaled for him to follow her into the dimly lit lounge, but she couldn’t hold back a laugh when his rain-soaked shoes made a truly ridiculous _squeak_.

They sat face to face, both basking in the warm, flavoured air. Dana had finished reading the menu so she let Alex build a little fortress around himself with the sturdy laminated paper material. She saw the top of his hood peek over from the wall of menus, then two shadow-cast eyes that wandered aimlessly, She shivered.

Is he still my brother? Is “it” still a human? She pondered, what is it thinking now? What are the million voices in its hivemind screaming and wailing about?

Dana stayed calm despite her internal uproar, her gaze unwavering, and her face never betraying the slightest hint of apprehension. Alex quietly folded his paper fort away and leaned in to face Dana, reaching a hand across the table to hold hers.

“You’re panicking.” He murmured faintly.

Dana struggled not to let any of it show. She resisted the urge to withdraw her hand, get up and run far away into the cold mist. She felt Alex’s hand on her own, the same familiar calluses and chemical burns - three distinct patches of rough skin from sulfuric acid, a small white scar from when he nicked himself on a broken bottle, neatly trimmed fingernails of a clean freak - but it all felt different in her mind. That scar wasn’t Alex’s scar, it was a cluster of differentiated cells pretending to be damaged tissue, the calluses never truly came from years of grinding his knuckles against a pen and paper, and this creature in front of her is just a nearly perfect copy of her deceased brother.

 _Deceased_. That word made her insides hurt a little, just a faint sting deep down in her. Alex’s hand was warm, she could feel the tendons and muscles entwining the virus’s imitation of bones, moving as naturally as any human. Her gaze shifted to his clothes, the denim and leather-imitating biomass that so perfectly copied the texture of inorganic, processed materials, but seemed to be made of a thousand smaller fractions of individual units that shift and morph ever so slightly. It wears faces like clothes, Dana remembers overhearing a Blackwatch soldier describing Zeus: "one second it’s someone’s mother, then the next a flesh-eating monster. It could be your daughter, hell, it could even be who I was fucking yesterday."

“Dana.” Alex said softly.

Dana was startled out of her spiraling thoughts. She jerked a little at the mention of her name.

“You’re scared of me.” The creature asserts.

“A bit.” Dana admitted, feeling the December chill even as they sit in the warm confines of the sushi restaurant.

“Maybe this will help.” Alex tilted his head at her, then pulled out a deck of cards from fucking nowhere.

Dana didn’t react, her gaze fixed on the cards. She watched Alex shuffle them with the elegance and dexterity her original brother never possessed, no doubt a skill from a lost soul screaming in his mind. Alex didn’t seem to notice as he proceeded to splice the deck into nearly perfect halves, then rifle them back together.

Alex noticed her staring, and flashed her a somewhat sheepish grin.

“You know,” Dana wanted to slap herself as soon as the words left her mouth, “My brother...was never good at this kind of thing.”

Alex stopped. “I am your brother.”

“Yeah, I mean...l-look, I-” Dana found herself tongue-tied, struggling to form the right words. Embarrassment and regret flushed her cheeks red, “You are, but you never were…I mean, you know, before you can absorb people-”

“ _Shhh_!” Alex shushed her nervously, his eyes darting around the room, then he seemed to relax a little once whatever his virus brain told him seemed to put him at ease.

Dana covered her mouth quickly, a look of guilt shading her eyes.

“I don’t blame you.” Alex said, trying to sound nonchalant as he continued shuffling the cards, “I don’t even know what I am at this point.”

Silence overtook Dana. She didn’t realize whatever her brother had become, it must have been just as hard on his human consciousness as it is on hers. He has to live with the voices, oh by god the voices, Dana’s mind drifted back to her time in the red zone, then to the Blackwatch soldiers, how they screamed and screamed.

She said nothing more as Alex finished shuffling the cards. He let her gingerly pick one from the deck, face down, then took a sneak peek at it before setting it back in. Queen of hearts.

Alex spliced the deck into three equal parts. Dana instinctively reached for the one on the far right. He spliced that deck, and Dana chose again. Then again. And again. Dana couldn’t help but hold back a laugh when there were only two cards left in the deck.

Bright blue eyes immediately darted to observe her, “What’s so funny?”

“I just…I don’t know where this trick is going.”

“Where it’s going is…” Alex dramatically waved his hands over the remaining two cards, “blowing your mind. Go ahead, take a look.”

Dana reached out and flipped over the two cards: six of spades, five of clubs. She turned up to look at an awkwardly grinning Alex, and slowly shook her head.

“No? Aw.” His gaze sank, then suddenly faced her again, “Well, how about this?”

He reached out to her and Dana flinched, but he only reached behind her and pulled a card out from her collar. It had been tucked between her jacket and her shirt. Queen of hearts.

Alex held the card between his fingers, triumphantly grinning.

Dana burst out laughing, “Ok, you got me there. I’m not gonna ask how you did it ‘cause that would break the magic.”

Alex tucked the card back into the deck. “I told ya it would blow your mind.”

Dana jokingly patted the top of her head, showing an intact cranium. Then she made a little explosion sound while wiggling her fingers away.

Alex stopped suddenly. Everything in him stopped, Dana could never forget how a human could just...stop. His eyes, his muscles, his heartbeat and breathing all seemed to come to a sudden and complete halt. Panic washed over her as she thought of the Supreme Hunter and its claws, the stench of rot and flesh. But that feeling only lasted a split second before the waiter came towards them with two plates of neatly stacked sushi; steamed white rice piled high on tender broiled teriyaki chicken, sashimi glazed with a shiny gloss of spice and sauce. Dana involuntarily swallowed at the sight of her order.

They dug into their food happily, Dana not giving much of a damn about the soy sauce sticking to her chin, and Alex slurping his miso soup with a truly horrific noise. The hours spent confined by the thunderstorm and then the long cab ride made them both realize their hunger. Dana fished out a piece of squishy fish slice, and clumsily stabbed it with her chopsticks, sauce went flying.

“That’s not how you use them.” Alex instructed.

This is one thing the original Alex passed down, the know-it-all mentality. Dana secretly sighed, knowing she’d be stuck for the rest of eternity with his lectures. Alex showed Dana how to use the chopsticks, and Dana tried to copy to the best of her ability. Alex commented on her twitchy fingers, and Dana retaliated by making fun of his ridiculous layers of collars.

“It’s a sign of power, Dana.” Alex explained, “It’s like the All T’oqapu tunic, it shows my achievements and status.”

To emphasize his point, he popped the collars on his grey hoodie and leather jacket, shrouding his face in more shadows.

They talked some more, Alex watched with amusement as Dana pointed out her chicken teriyaki chunks look like little dinosaurs.

“It’s like a-uh...like the big one, with the _looong_ neck and the _looong_ tail...the ones you see in _Jurassic Park_.”

“Brachiosaurus.” He replied instinctively.

Dana put down her chopsticks with a _clack_. “Fine, genius.” She smirked, “If you know so much, why don’t you tell me what kinda fish we’re eating?”

Alex didn’t fire back. He picked up a piece of pearly white fish and chewed it slowly, as if analysing its texture. Dana’s smile faded, does he have a flesh detector in his virus genome somewhere…?

“ _Oreochromis aureus_.” He finally answered.

“W-what? How could you possibly know?”

“Low accumulation of mercury, faint musty flavour indicative of geosmin and 2-methylisoborenol commonly produced by cyanobacteria in water bodies, alpha-Linolenic acid from flaxseed derivatives and a high omega-6 fatty acid content…”

“Say it again,” Dana squinted at her brother, “But in English.”

“Tastes like it.” Alex simply said, shoving another mouthful of fish down hungrily. Completely oblivious to Dana’s glare.

Sighing ever so quietly, Dana dug into her food again. That’s her brother sitting across the table from her alright, just has to be the smartest in the room.

Something stung her heart once again just as her mind began to settle. _What about the boy who used to play games with you and go skating with you and watch scary movies with you-_

_That boy is dead now._

She glanced up again at the viral copy of her brother, sitting before her and absent mindedly fiddling with the frayed ends of his jacket as he mulled over the flavour of his sashimi. He noticed her staring, gave a somewhat awkward smile, and went back to picking apart his own meal. His elbow connected with the glass of water that’s been sitting precariously close to the edge of the table, and-

 ** _Splash_**!

Alex fumbled, pulling out tissues to clean up the mess. Some patrons turned their head and stared, but no waiters seemed to notice the small commotion. Dana grabbed the stack of paper towels nearby, resigning herself to begrudgingly cleaning up after her brother.

“Dude, how?” She couldn’t help but ask.

“I-I was just-look, look, if you weren’t staring so much-”

“I can stare as much as I want-”

“You were glaring-Dana, glaring.” Alex gestured dramatically to emphasize his point. He balled up the rest of the damp paper towels and threw them into a nearby garbage bin. “And I mean x-ray vision death stare.”

Dana furrowed her brows, “Was I really that scary?”

That question seemed to make her brother hesitate just a moment, “No, not scary,” he shook his head, “Distrustful, apprehensive, like a startled prey.”

Dana only saw hurt and sadness in his eyes. She completely forgot for a moment that maybe this is the perfected illusion of a walking virus. No, this cannot be the work of a man-made bioweapon, no amount of genetic programming could emulate this genuine human emotion.

This is no illusion, and those silver blue eyes gazing back at her are still shimmering with a glint of hope. The creature, no, the man before her is still her Alex. Her only brother.

“I know you don’t trust me.” Alex pressed his voice low, sounding as gentle as possible, “Not after whatever shit I pulled with those Blackwatch soldiers and marines...but with only a few months’ worth of memories in me, I still love you more than anything.”

A smile tugged at Dana’s lips, her brother never said that to her, not so openly in this manner, at least. But maybe it’s for the better, maybe her new brother really could make up for lost time now. Maybe nothing has to change.

Alex took hold of her hands again, folding them in his own. “Besides, when you really get down to it, it’s not like being made of a virus is much different from being made of cells.”

Dana’s train of thought carrying her reverie dropped directly into a chasm of confusion. All she could do was stammer out a “What?” at him.

“Basic genetic structures, I mean.” His matter-of-fact voice pulled her back into the realization that having the same brother meant the same smartass, “I know cells don’t shapeshift, but the underlying biological dogma-”

“English please.” Dana waved a dismissive hand between them.

“All the difference comes from a few glitches in the system.” Alex tried futilely to simplify the concept for his sister, “A switch in the genetic code-”

“What, like the _Matrix_?”

“Simpler! Only 4 letters - A, T, G, C. You delete a few codon’s worth of nucleic acids-and the spliceosomal complex misaligns an intron or exon - BAM! Catastrophic mutations. Just by changing one amino acid you can turn genotypic hemoglobins to non-functional protein clumps! I mean, viruses kinda work the same way…? Blacklight (Dana, stop giving me that look, I know it’s a shitty name) has a poly-A tail that I-”

“Stop, stop. Please.” Dana held up her hands in a gesture of defeat, “Before you go on any longer, I’m gonna pretend I understood all...that, and ask if you’re finished with your sashimi.”

The sudden shift in conversation jolted Alex a bit. He blinked aimlessly, confused. “Huh? Yeah, of course. It’s good, very-very...Japanese...”

He began twiddling with the frayed threads on his hoodie again. _Too human to be a virus_ , Dana thought quietly, _too human to be faking it_.

She smiled. She could work with this. Starting with the vocabulary perhaps, then some social etiquette.

“Whatcha laughing at?” Came her brother’s baffled question.

“You, dork.” Dana gently elbowed him across the table. She stood up and threw on her coat, “I’m laughing at you.”

“Laugh all you want.” Alex retorted, “It won’t make you any smarter.”

Dana brought her heel down on his foot. Alex grabbed her hat and scarf and ran out the door. Dana shook her head, signed the cheque, and chased after him into the misty winter rain.


	2. Who Needs Video Games Anyways?

_No popcorn_. That was the rule. After Dana’s friends’ attempt at a birthday surprise resulted in Dana jumping out of the window, and Alex hurling a table at the partygoers, there were to be no more surprises with the Mercer siblings.

They both never mentioned it, it’s almost childishly funny to even speak of the reason, but Alex could’ve sworn he heard the gunfire by his window again. Thermobaric tanks and troops set to fire down hails of bullets at him, the rapid click and boom of a thousand recoiling barrels, and the momentary searing hot pain that sliced through him as he soared high above the Manhattan landscape.

Dana fares no better, she’s still jumpy. The other day Fiona came over with a bottle of bubbly to celebrate her journal articles, the _pop_ made her flinch. Of course, her friend took it as her normal skittishness, but to Dana that sound was so much worse than nails on a chalkboard.

So they stay away from loud noises, and surprises. During the day Alex is the figure looming over his post at the university’s library, and Dana is the busy one weaving between bookshelves and old transcripts, trying to come up with a new scoop for the daily editorials. There’s nothing much to hope for in the lives of fugitives.

It’s been almost 2 years since the second outbreak. Dana still barely managed to accept her brother’s return. _There’s just so much that happened in between for this to be a smooth transition,_ she contemplated to herself, _maybe he’s back for good, maybe he’s not_.

There’s so much that happened after his “death”, so much to clear up with Heller and his family. So many bodies to bury and lives to rebuild. Then she ran away from it all. With the root cause of her misery.

“I should be back in New York.” She used to stare misty-eyed at herself in the mirror, “I should be helping them.”

Alex is trying to be human. He’s shown a considerable amount of effort, even more so than when he first picked up genetic engineering. It’s almost comical to see his imposing figure pouring over _How to Build Your Social Network_ and _The Secret to Friendship_. At night when thirst or dreaming echoes of gunfire wake Dana, she opens up her brother’s manuals to find little scribbles all over the dog-eared pages.

“Smile more”, “actively listen”, “eye contact”...”Need to work on posture...buy _Friends_ ? Study social etiquette...DO NOT LEARN FROM _BIG BANG THEORY_ ”.

There were dozens more pages filled with these little notes. Sometimes a little drawing of the “appropriate” social behavior, diagrams that show proper responses. Dana finds it funny how Alex seems to categorize emotional responses like programming languages.

“You can’t just expect an algorithm in human behavior.” She remembers telling him once. He only furrowed his brow.

“Why not?”

“Humans are...unpredictable. Yes, most people follow a vague pattern...but individual circumstances differ. You can’t always expect to get y by inputting x...life isn’t like that.”

“How I wish it was.” Alex yawned and stretched on his bean bag, a dozen or so life magazines and relationship advice books strewn across the table before him. He’s clearly not suited for something as intangible as relationships. Dana could picture him moving among lab materials and test tubes like a well-coordinated machine. For some reason, her _inhuman_ brother now felt more _human_ than ever. She remembers how he first came to her after five years of separation, no hint of reminiscence in his voice.

“I need some info.” Was his only cold command, “You can help me dig around.”

Dana caught Alex making awkward small talk with the attractive waitress at the cafe the other day. The way he intentionally copied her posture, and repeated after everything she said, how he shifted his body weight away from her and slacked his shoulders in a relaxed stance - all things Alex never bothered to do before.

“So you’re telling me this...antigen...is the key?”

“Antibody.” Alex corrected her, “Antigen is the signal the _antibodies_ bind to. And yes, if we could identify a proper antibody, then we could potentially activate our immune system.”

He paused, and the lady batted her curled eyelashes at him in a confused but charmed smile. Evidently, all of what he said passed right over her head, but she’s putting in a lot of effort. She flashed him a pretty smile as he carried on explaining genetic epistasis, oblivious to his surroundings.

“Ok…” Dana watched her furrow her neat, pretty brows, “so if the brigand-”

“Ligand.” came Alex’s patient correction.

“Sorry, ligand. So if the ligand activates the phosphorylation cascade-”

“It will activate a cellular response. Excellent!” Alex clasped his hands together joyfully, “See? I said biochemical genetic engineering _is_ for everyone.”

She gave him a sweet smile, complete with dimples and shiny lip gloss. “Thank you for teaching me something new, I never did catch your name-”

“No problem. It’s, uh-Alex.”

“Heya Alex.” The waitress beamed at him, “I’m Ida.”

When Alex noticed Dana watching from a distance, his face flushed red from neck to ear.

“Having fun?” She asked, a coy ear-to-ear smile greeting her approaching brother.

“Just making conversation. Did you get the party-sized ones?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about that. Look, it’s just a few friends from work-”

“How many are _a few_?”

“Eh, just two, look-” her grocery bags were suddenly snatched away by Alex, “-they won’t bother you too much, I promise.”

“It’s not that I’m worried about, Dana.” Alex strode on effortlessly with two heavy bags of soda and chips, Dana had to break into a little jog to keep up with him.

“What do you mean?”

Alex suddenly paused in the middle of the road, causing Dana to stumble into him.

“Listen, if one of them gets out any liquor, or anything that looks suspicious-”

“Jesus Alex! I’m not a kid anymore!”

“Don’t ever leave your drink alone, I know the party's at our house, but who knows? What if the library calls again and I have to leave-”

“We’re gonna play video games and talk about _girl stuff._ Happy? Those two aren’t even old enough to have people _believe_ that they are of drinking age. Besides, I called the library, they said they’re closed for the day.”

That last bit was a lie. Dana called the library to make sure they won’t contact Alex during their day off. The staff was initially hesitant to give Alex the day off since he seems to be the only employee who knows where _each_ book is kept, but after a few subtle reminders that Dana can see _everything_ he’s doing on his computer right now, the library manager was more than happy to offer Alex the whole day off.

However, Dana’s assurance seemed to put Alex at ease. _As long as it works_ , Dana mused to herself.

***

Fiona and Petra were eager to try out the big couch Dana had recycled from a yard sale. They offered amateur artistic critique on the Pollock-esque cheap-ass painting from the previous resident, had a thorough inspection of Dana’s old Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac album collection, and debated the usefulness of throw pillows.

“I’m just saying, this apartment could use some throw pillows.” Pointed Fiona.

“What, one that says ‘live love laugh’ and has a dream catcher on it?” Dana dismissed the idea with a wave, “ _No thanks._ ”

“It’s better than that big scary skeleton you’ve got over there.” Petra tilted her head at the jangly shape in the corner. Mr. Okazaki’s bony frame protruded from under Alex’s discarded lab coat, the moment he thrifted it back from the university Dana knew he would name it after some geneticist.

Same goes for their two fish, Watson and Crick.

By this point Dana could only _pray_ the two girls don’t discover Alex’s bacteria farm-

“Hey Dana! What’s in these petri dishes?! They look so gross!”

_Crap._

“ _Phytophthora infestans._ ” Came the even voice of her brother, “Best you don’t touch them.”

The two girls jerked away from the specimen and yelped a little when Alex emerged from his room. Their panic gaze switched between Dana and the mysterious new addition to their conversation - Alex is far from a presentable, hospitable figure at this point. He still hid his disheveled curves under a heavy hood, so the girls saw nothing of his face save for two bright, glistening spots from under the shadows.

“That’s your brother? The one you talked about?”

Dana sighed, sagging her shoulders, “Yep, that’s Mr. Grumpyface. Alex, say hi to Petra and Fiona.”

Petra enthusiastically waved at Alex, Fiona managed a shy smile. Alex raised an eyebrow at the new nickname, then quickly broke into a friendly grin as well.

“I’m Alex. I’ll be here if you guys need anything.”

“Nah,” Dana ushered him back into his room, “You just do your...science. We’ll have fun without you.”

Alex shrugged, then dove back into the shadows of his own study. Dana prayed the two girls didn’t catch a glimpse of the freaky diagrams and charts Alex got in his room - the place looked like a pathology lab from a crime show. Once she walked in there and found a half-thawed pig carcass sprawled out on a stretcher - it was Alex’s attempt at studying coagulation of subcutaneous fats.

Fiona and Petra plugged in their copy of the video game, started up the TV screen, and proceeded to pick characters.

“Honestly, guys. I’m pretty new to this game,” Dana confessed, “Which class should I pick?”

Petra counted the characters off on her fingers one by one, “Let’s see...there’s the brawler, he’s got a lot of health but he can’t move very fast-”

“Probably because of all the chains and skulls he’s got on his chest.” Dana commented, “What’s the point of all those belts?”

“I dunno. He looks hella cool in them though.”

“He looks like a punk band reject.”

“Well, how about the recon guy?” Petra’s controller shifted to highlight another class on the screen.

“Why does he have all those goggles? And they have _three_ lenses for the NVG? They really look like Bla-”

Dana stopped herself before she could blurt out the unit name. Petra blinked at her, perplexed by the sudden halt.

“-Like black ops guys you see in movies.” Dana finished her sentence, feeling uneasy.

Fiona cut in with a mouthful of BBQ chips.

“I think it’s said in his backstory that he was ex-Spetsnaz? I don’t remember all the lore and stuff for this game though.”

“Who needs lore for a FPS?” Petra leered across the couch at her friend, who was busying herself with a new bag of chips, “As far as I’m concerned the lore is just ‘scientist fucks up, zombies everywhere’ and all we have to do is shoot.”

It felt weird for Dana to hear them talk about something like that, Manhattan is still fresh in her memory regardless of how many nights have passed. It wasn’t a game for her, nor for everyone else in the quarantine. But her friends here... _they have no idea what happened, do they?_

“Who’s that?” She points to a female character next to the recon guy.

“Oh, that’s the medic class. She’s got a gun that shoots healing goop, and she can deploy these nanobots that-”

“Why is she wearing a skimpy nurse uniform when everyone else has kevlars and MOPP suits? Why are her boobs twice the size of her head? How is she running around _and_ shooting zombies with these red leather high-heels on?”

Petra and Fiona shared an awkward glance.

“That’s just...the aesthetic of the game…? Look, she’s got pretty solid stats-”

“And healing goop.”

Suddenly the door in the hallway was thrown open, Alex’s head popped out around the corner to stare at the girls in the living room.

“ _Healing goop?_ ” He seemed genuinely thrilled, “How does _that_ work?”

“Uh, so this scientist-” Fiona began explaining.

“Is it cellular regeneration? How did they bypass the Hayflick limit? Did they artificially induce telomerase production with a positive feedback loop? Does it have IPSCs that differentiate on the stop? If so how do these cells handle antibodies and the immune system comin’ at them? Is there a-”

“Alex, it’s just a game.”

Dana watched her brother’s gaze droop down a bit.

Petra generously extended her bag of chips, “Come join us! We got a spare controller, and Dana has these...chips! We got enough space for you on the couch too!”

Alex seemed stunned. He’d never been offered a bag of chips before, much less a spot at the table and a chance to try out something he always deemed “mundane” and “childish”. Dana knew the old Alex scoffed at her collection of Pokemon cards and nerdy gaming posters in her college dorm. It did sting a little inside when he told her, “I see you have been putting your college tuition to good use.”

“I’m running the school journals _all on my own_ !” She remembers getting angry at him, “Do you even know what a _hobby_ is?”

This is a different Alex. New start, new chances to try out things he’d never done before. She nodded at her brother, smiling encouragingly.

“Alright.” Alex replied cheerily. He stumbled clumsily across their scavenged furniture, and plopped down into what narrow space there was left between Dana and Petra. The latter handed him a controller coated in chip dust and finger grease.

“So…” Alex furrowed his brows, “How do I do this?”

 _Alex, seriously? Thousands of people in your head and none of them know how to play a video game?_ Then Dana remembered, _this model of controller just came out last month. It’s brand new even to Alex._

“Oh, it’s not much different from the old systems.” Petra explained nonchalantly, “Blue button here for movement...hold down the side buttons for sprint...red button to shoot...there, and that little one is for aiming.”

“Ah, violence.” Alex commented, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Petra and Fiona finally settled for the brawler and the assassin. Dana clicked around a few times, getting used to the feeling of the tiny buttons. She ended up picking the robot support character ( _it’s pretty neat-looking_ , she thought, _it’s got a glowy eye and a built-in jet pack_ ). Then they all patiently waited for Alex to pick his character.

He picked the medic girl.

***

It’s been half an hour, and Alex is beating _everyone_ at this game.

“Dude, how are you _so good_ at this?” Petra asked incredulously, after Alex had just landed a headshot on a zombie on the other side of the map.

“I dunno. Practice I guess.” He shrugged his shoulders.

 _What kind of practice?_ Dana thought bitterly, _of fucking course he’s good at this, he’s got a body count in the thousands…_

Her momentary distraction led her character to be bludgeoned brutally by a few zombies. A big red “!” began flashing on her character screen as she stumbled away from the horde, on the brink of death. Then her escape route was blocked off by something big…

“The Monolith!” Fiona screamed, “That’s the final boss!”

All is lost, Dana’s trusty robot jet-packer is about to be smashed to bits and recycled in a scrapyard, Dana closed her eyes in despair.

A gigantic pair of breasts clad in a white nurse costume descended from the crimson sky above, there was an aura of blue healing, then the little robot was back on its feet.

“I’ve got your back.” Said the nurse as she dove back into battle.

Dana shot Alex a grateful glance, her brother smiled back at her, he then turned his attention to some zombies creeping up on the assassin.

Fiona’s assassin was doing rather well, but running short on ammo. Dana rushed over to her side and deployed some supply crates, then they began unloading clip after clip into the towering monster. The brawler hauled a metal bench and tossed it at the Monolith, the projectile hit with a _clunk_.

 _My brother can throw whole freaking cars_ . Dana contemplated to herself, _this is nothing_ ... _he’s a walking hellraiser, a mass murderer…?_

“Is this what people do for fun?” Alex’s voice interrupted her spiraling train of panicked thought, “Is running around and shooting stuff...fun?”

“I guess.” Petra shrugged, “I mean, it’s stress relief.”

“Yeah! I imagine the zombies with my boss’s face on them sometimes.” Fiona helpfully added.

Alex said nothing more than a curt “Interesting” before he focused his attention on the battle once again. Dana however, couldn’t care any less about the dying Monolith now - it’s down to its last health bar anyways. She’s far too distracted by what her brother said.

_Maybe all that death wasn’t fun for him either...I can’t imagine what it’s like to live with the memories of a thousand people, and he’s managing it. But after Whitelight...after Heller and his family...does he think it’s “fun”?_

“Oh shit!”

Everyone was startled by Fiona’s sudden exclamation. She stared down at the new bag of chips, dumbstruck and in fear.

“Dana, does this party mix have nuts in it?”

“Oh-damn it, damn, I-I totally forgot.” Dana fumbled with her apology, “Shit, yeah! That bag’s got peanuts in it. Don’t touch that, Fi. I-um, I’ll run to the store and get something else.”

“Can you get ice cream?” Fiona batted her eyelashes at Dana, who couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, sure. Rocky road?”

“You know me like no other.” Fiona blew her a kiss as Dana hastily grabbed her keys and headed out. Before Alex could voice his opinion, his sister was out the front door and making a mad dash for 7/11.

The air instantly became denser than a blackhole. Silence loomed over the remaining three like an invisible net of social awkwardness.

"Um...so, you’re her brother?”

“Yep.”

“By blood?”

As soon as Fiona asked that question she realized how awful it was of her. She wanted to smack herself in the face.

“Yeah.” Alex shrugged, then remembered the advice from his books - “A conversation should be back and forth, like bouncing a ball”. He then added, “She’s my only sibling...no other relatives in the family.”

“So how did you guys end up in Illinois?” Petra asked innocently, still eyeing Mr. Okazaki with a degree of suspicion.

 _Oh god, there’s the question. Ok, he practiced this, he can lie_.

“We’re actually from the East Coast-” _Shit, that’s a bad start_ , “-we moved here, uh, we moved here because...of jobs.”

_Yeah, that’s the plan, just go with it._

“Jobs?” Fiona pushed the question.

“You see, the-eh-the East Coast, it’s too...crowded. Hard to get a job there that makes a decent living-”

Fiona nodded sympathetically, “So I heard. NYC is like, crazy expensive isn’t it? My friend lived there for college, and she said the coffee there costs 3 bucks more than it does here.”

_That’s good, she’s buying it. Keep going._

“Yeah, so I figured...why not make life easier for me and my sister? So that’s how we ended up here, me - teaching biology on my weekends, and Dana - still searching for her big scoop.” Alex managed an innocent shrug as he finished his story.

 _Phew_.

“So it doesn’t bother you? The whole ‘cornfield-for-miles’ aesthetic here?” Petra pursued.

“No, uh. Corn is very interesting. Corn is-it’s, um, interesting genetic structure. Fascinating how you can see the process of artificial selection from the few strands of DNA left in its genome. Of course, plant reproduction is _much_ more different, and they are _tetraploids_ \- four copies of each chromosome! Isn’t that fascinating? I wonder how the cyclic AMP build up is different from human cells…”

“I didn’t catch any of that.” Fiona admitted.

“You do sound smart.” Petra commented astutely, “That’s how I know you’re Dana’s brother. You have the same wit.”

Alex couldn’t help but feel a faint smile. It’s nice to be complimented. He then remembered he should always return a compliment, after all it’s what the book recommended.

“You, uh, not bad. Good job killing the zombie.” He blurted out awkwardly.

“Hah! Only in video games. If that kind of outbreak happens in real life, I’m pretty much screwed.”

Neither of them noticed Alex’s eyes dim for just a brief second.

“Yeah,” he muttered to himself, giving a soft chuckle, “Screwed.”

Dana seemed to be taking her time finding some nut-free product, so Petra explained how to play marry fuck kill to Alex. Of course he knew the game existed, he just never thought of playing it himself.

“Ok, um...Dolores Umbridge, Jar Jar Binks, and...King Jeoffrey. Alex, go.”

“Why do you always have to choose the nasty ones, Petra?”

Alex pondered silently as the two girls bickered over their characters of choice.

“I guess I’ll...kill King Jeoffrey, because he’s a king and has a lot of influence over people. Bad influence. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with that old witch Umbridge, so I guess I’ll have to marry Jar Jar Binks…”

Dana stepped inside with several grocery bags dangling from her arms.

“...Does that mean I have to fuck Dolores Umbridge?”

“Who’s fucking Dolores Umbridge?” Dana called out, horrified. “What’s going on here, Alex?”

“Oh, we’re just playing MFK.” Petra waved off the look of concern on her friend’s face.

“I was gone for ten minutes, and you turn my brother into an exotic dancer, next thing I know you’re handing him cocaine like skittles.”

“He’s fine.” Fiona gently elbowed a goofy-looking Alex, who gave an embarrassed smile at his sister in return.

“Alright, move. Shove. Begone.” Dana wedged herself comfortably between her brother and Petra, “Here’s the ice cream.”

“Yay!”

“And here’s crackers - nut free, I checked.”

The girls dove into their pack of snacks as a new round of zombie-slaying began.

***

Petra and Fiona didn’t have to stay behind to clean up, but they insisted. The couch was once again free of chip bags and plastic packaging, so the girls took it upon themselves to occupy as much space as possible.

“So what’s the story with bones over there?” Petra pointed to Mr. Okazaki, still ominously overseeing their entire living room.

“My brother thrifted him from a university professor. Retired biologist or something.” Dana replied, too full on ice cream and chips to be bothered to move.

“He has a...particular taste for interior decor.” Fiona commented lazily, eyeing Alex behind foggy vision.

“It’s post-modern abstract expressionism.” Alex replied modestly, “A hint of Degas, with some De Stijl thrown in to accentuate the negative space.”

“He’s bullshitting you.” Dana cut in.

Alex resigned himself to looking defeated. After all that he has learned, he still has _no taste_ for the arts. Maybe he never will. But oh boy, he lives for the moments of absolute confusion on people’s faces when he sinks into one of his technobabbles. _That’s art right there_ , he silently contemplated.

“It’s good, y’know?” Petra suddenly popped up, albeit still recovering from the ice cream she indulged in.

“What’s good?”

“This…”Petra made a vague gesture to the room around her, “What you and Alex have - I just thought...this is good. Y’know? Friends, stupid jokes? My uncle got deployed to Kazakhstan a few years ago, he said he misses stuff like this…”

A moment later, she seemed embarrassed by her sudden sentimentality.

“Eh, ignore that. Must’ve been the stupid ice cream making my brain mushy. Dana, you’re a jerkass.”

“Thanks.” was Dana’s curt reply.

“And Alex, you’re fucking weird.” Petra turned to him, a teasing smile on her face.

“Um, thanks.”

“And Fiona, don’t get me started on your eating habits-”

“Thanks!” came Fi’s loud interruption.

The second season of _The Office_ lasted much longer than all of them thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, eh, so I meant to get this chapter out earlier, but school...anyways, I know there's a huge gap between Prototype 2 and when this fic takes place, I'm planning on filling that in later! I know Petra and Fiona might seem a little bland now, but they're gonna be more fleshed-out as the story goes on, I promise!


	3. An Old Friend

Two weeks ago some bored college kids came into the library during Alex’s shift, snooped around the lifestyle magazine section, and proceeded to check out an aged copy of _Gray’s Anatomy_ by the front desk.

“Dude, there’s pages missing from this book, it’s too damn old.”

Alex lifted a lazy glance to observe the two kids by his desk: one of them had scraggly blond hair that grew in wild directions and a face full of freckles, the other sported a neat crew cut, with a stained camo shirt and a satchel slung haphazardly over his shoulder.

The crew cut shrugged to the freckles, “Only copy we could find.”

Alex scanned the book, and watched as freckles hauled in a new batch of books to check out: _Harrison’s Principle of Internal medicine_ , _Hurst’s the Heart_ , and _Rock-Hard Abs in 30 Days_.

Crew cut lifted an eyebrow at his friend.

“You kids studying for MCAT?” Alex asked sleepily, glancing this way and that at the kids through half-lidded eyes.

“College finals.” The crew cut replied curtly with an awkward smile.

The book _was_ really damn old, Alex confirmed the kids’ suspicions. There were several pages missing, and the rest were in such small print that Alex’s eyes began to hurt after staring at them for a while.

“Tell you what.” He slammed the book shut, “Bring your textbooks over here, I’ve got time.”

***

It was none of her business, Dana knew that, but they’re supposed to _lay low_ , not go around stirring up more interest in themselves. There has been chatter around the quiet town about the sudden appearance of the mysterious siblings, and there are bound to be people who didn’t buy into the whole “we moved for financial reasons” excuse that Dana thought up. Now the more desperate college kids are clinging around Alex like burs on his pant legs.

Still, he’s doing _something_ , and it’s keeping his mind off the horrific nightmares he apparently suffers from. Dana recalls a few times waking up in the middle of the night, her throat scratchy and aching for a drink, only to find Alex sitting cross-legged in their living room, TV on mute, still watching news reports from the reconstructed Manhattan.

Then he’d turn and look at her, his eyes sunken with grief and regret into deep black holes. The dim light of the TV contouring his hollow cheeks - he looked fuzzy in that light, like an ethereal ghost.

The spring air was still frigid with old snow. Typical for the midwest. Dana parked her bike outside of the small doughnut place and trudged softly through half-melted mud up to the wafting scent of coffee and syrup. Warmth inside the shop fogged up the glass windows, hazy shapes of people shifted around - joggers, businessmen, kids late for school. Another gust of cold air pushed Dana into the cozy confines of the shop, _last coffee run for the morning_ , she thought to herself.

Four custard-filled glazed doughnuts, two apple strudels, one plain bagel with blueberry cream cheese; one small black cold brew, and one large cookie crunch caramel chocolate sea salt double-whip frappuccino/macchiato americano with mocha latte. One for Alex, and one for her. Alex’s students all have a voracious appetite, which just made Dana’s job more difficult.

The cashier at the counter didn’t say much, so Dana tried to cover her embarrassment by asking for extra napkins and forks, hoping it would convince the cashier that this isn’t all for _herself._ The dubious glance from the girl behind the counter led Dana to believe otherwise.

Biting cold wind embraced Dana again as she stepped out into the pale morning. Swirling white steam rose from the coffee cups, mixing with her own fogged breath. Between the faint crunching of footsteps on hard snow, the low monotone humming of distant engines, there was a cold echo that made Dana stop in her tracks. Something unfamiliar intruding this idyllic scenery of a quaint and quiet morning - something sinister.

Dana unloaded her cargon into the little basket on her bike, the frost-ridden metal frame made her wince. There’s a shadow circling the back of her mind, a nagging sensation of discomfort and illness that made her almost run back into the coffee shop.

 _What’s wrong?_ She forced down her panic, _what’s going on?_ There’s nothing out of the place - people going about their day, cars zooming past her, weak April sun shattered by the twisting branches of sycamore trees - why is she gripping the handlebars so tightly? Why could she hear her own blood rush in her ears? Why is the white steam fading away from her view to give sight to-

_No..._

The serpentine figure of Elizabeth Greene sank back into the shadows as soon as Dana’s eyes focused. There was a vicious smirk hanging on her lips before she quietly faded into one of the crowded shops. Her dark eyes glistened, her face pale as the snow beneath her boots. She was no longer wearing the tight black clothes Alex found her in - a large wool coat concealed her frame and draped down her thin shoulders. Before Dana could take in the details, she vanished.

 _No, no. Wrong. Has to be a college girl. Barista? Waitress? Girl on a date? Can’t be Greene...Greene is_ **_dead_ ** _. Dead and gone._

That’s it, it was a college girl on a date, not smiling at Dana, but at her boyfriend who came to meet her in the shop. Nothing more. Plenty of redheads in this town, all around that age…

Dana couldn’t convince herself, she hastily set her bike against a tree and bolted for the shop. She had to see.

Some people turned their heads to glance at Dana when she shoved her way inside the shop, a few gave her unpleasant stares. Dana stood in the centre of the shop, frantically searching for the figure cloaked in a wool coat. Greene was gone.

Heart racing, Dana picked up her bike and stepped on the pedals as hard as she could, sending snow flying under her wheels.

***

Alex held the stack of flashcards against his chest, watching patiently as Joey cycled the amino acids through his mind.

“Valine...leucine, isoleucine...glutamine...wait, no-”

“Start with the aliphatic ones.” He offered politely, “You’ve got valine, leucine, isoleucine and glutamine, just two more…”

Joey threw his head between his palms and face-slammed into the desk. “I give up.”

“Man, this is taking forever.” came Colin’s muffled reply through a mouthful of chewing gum. He wiped down his ink-stained hands on his camo shirt, adding to the collection of colourful patterns. Alex wondered how many of those shapes were originally printed on, and how many were Colin’s artistic liberties.

Joey peered at his mentor through matted dirty blond hair. His freckled face scrunched up in deep thought, “There’s like, twenty of them. You can’t even tell between amino acids and nucleic acids.”

“Yes I can.”

“You said thymine was one of them, that’s a nucleotide.”

Alex let out a loud sigh.

Something pulled at the back of his mind, a memory that he stole...a memory that belonged to a Gentek scientist. He should’ve known. When he was studying genetics himself, he had nothing but a lamp and his textbooks, just plain old rote. There are other minds in there now. Why didn’t he realize that?

No, he couldn’t have. It seemed that before, when he first started harvesting minds like a reaper cutting down souls, all he could draw from his victims were incessant screaming, pain, sound of flesh ripping from bone, and a soul-numbing fear that sank deep into his bones. He never could’ve perused those memories without a misstep, then the shrill wail of a hornet’s nest in his mind dragging him back to the painful abyss. He never did take a closer look at who he consumed, who he became, and what those people were.

Still, those memories must’ve had an effect on him. Whatever he developed during his time in Manhattan came as close to a conscious as Dr. Mercer could ever imagine. He felt more... _human_ , despite not being one. What a strange conundrum.

“Alex? Hey, Alex!”

He snapped back to reality with a startle, “Huh?”

Dana hurried inside the library, a box of doughnuts and cups of coffee at hand. Joey and Colin cheered at the sight of breakfast, and began devouring their supply as soon as the box was out of Dana’s hands.

“Here you go,” She nestled into a seat next to him, “One small black coffee, just how you liked it.”

He furrowed his brow, “I don’t like black coffee.”

“But you always-” Dana stopped, realized, then smiled at him, “Ah, it’s your paper pushing days habits. Well, no more of that. You can have some of mine.”

She pushed the ridiculously large drink toppled with a small mound of whipped cream at him, Alex gauged the sugar content in that cup, then shook his head.

“So, how’s the study going?” Dana asked, smiling. A thin mist of sweat on her forehead and the faint warmth of her breath still carried the chill from outside. Her pointy nose and cheeks were red like holly berry.

Alex wanted to ask what got her heart beating so fast and irregular, like she’s been running a marathon, or why her voice is shaking a bit at the end of each syllable, or why her fingernails dug into the wooden table unconsciously, but Joey took the initiative.

“You okay?” He offered a sympathetic look to her, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Dana shook her head, “No, no ghosts.”

They settled down around the table a bit more, sharing bites of doughnuts. Colin and Joey made fun of Alex for sticking to a plain bagel with the bare minimum of cream cheese on top. Alex didn’t answer, sugary foods were too common in Manhattan - they were his daily breakfast too, during his time at Gentek.

“What’s this?” Dana picked up the stack of flashcards, took a cursory glance at the terms, then quickly threw it back onto the table. “I give up.”

“Amino acids,” Colin helpfully explained, “We’re trying to get Joey to remember ’em.”

“Actually,” Alex remembered his previous little mental excursion, “I’ve got a way for you to memorize them.”

“You’re just telling me that _now_?”

“It’s from an old game,” Alex carried on, leaving out the fact that he never played it _personally_ , “it’s a silly little song sung by this alien scientist. But it works. It’s, err-”

He stopped. He didn’t want to sing at all, when he was in college he had to sing _Auld Lang Syne_ in a group for one of his classes. He had a monotonous and scratchy voice back then, and the performance didn’t go unnoticed by the meaner kids as he had wished.

Joey and Colin looked at him expectantly. Alex suddenly realized he couldn’t bail now that he’d given hope to Joey, maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as he thought-

“ _Glycine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, alanine...they all are aliphatic, so you would not see a ring…_ ”

It didn’t sound _that bad_ , he had a little more emphasis to each note, and his voice didn’t shake like he feared. Joey and Colin listened on, Dana whipped out her phone and set it to record.

“”Dana, put that away.” Alex commanded sternly, embarrassment crawling up his back like a trail of spiders.

“It’s for school!” She protested innocently, but Joey pushed her phone away with one hand, insisting that Alex continue.

“ _The lone human amino acid with one is proline...from proteins we-aaaare-foooooormed…_ ”

***

There’s something bothering Dana, Alex could tell.

She seemed dodgy recently, unwilling to spare a friendly smile at him, yet he caught her glancing in his way every now and then. She’s been sleeping less, too. Staying up late on that laptop of hers until dawn breaks through _just enough_ , then falling into a deep slumber while hunched over her precious journals.

I _t’s just extra work for the monthly editorials_ , she explained. They both knew that’s a blatant lie. There were no more editorials with Dana’s name under the headlines.

Alex didn’t know how to ask. He thought it was him, his presence made her uneasy. Who wouldn’t be? Was it how he arranged Mr. Okazaki, their skeleton roommate? Or was it his heavy footfall from his study, while he paced around reconciling with those he devoured?

“Dana, just tell me.” He blocked her way to her room, almost pleading with her, “You’re waning.”

Dana’s shoulders sagged.

“It’s...you wouldn’t believe me. No, I wouldn’t believe me either.”

…

Alex sat on the edge of Dana’s bed while she paced around the room restlessly, her bright eyes focused on an unseen menace somewhere in the distance.

“But...I...Greene is _dead_.” Alex babbled, his mind as incoherent as his words.

“That’s what I thought.” Dana replied, “I keep trying to tell myself it was just another redhead on a date...but I just can’t put the notion to rest.”

Alex mused quietly as his sister continued pacing. Sibling quirks. He unconsciously drummed his fingers on her mattress.

“I have _no idea_ how this happens. She died in Manhattan, I consumed her-” He patted his head for emphasis, “Her memories, her personality...they’re all in _here_.”

Dana shuddered at the thought that Greene lives in her brother’s head. _It’s just a copy of her_ , she told herself, _the real Greene is gone_.

Suddenly, Alex stopped drumming his fingers. A beat. Then he started drumming on again.

“I honestly don’t know. Blacklight...got out of hand when I was working on it.” He winced at the words, talking about himself like he was the original Dr. Mercer…”But she definitely could be alive, somehow. We just don’t know how or what she’s after. We need to be careful.”

Dana felt a pang of sadness in her heart.

“Do we have to move again?”

“Better not. If we just dash out of town like we did last time...people will definitely suspect us. Better to just lay low and see if Greene makes the first move.”

“I hope not.”

Alex put his hand over Dana’s.

“If the situation calls for it, I want you to go back to the safehouse, just tell your friends it’s a family emergency. Wait here.”

Dana peered out of the door apprehensively as Alex walked back into his room. Minutes later he came back with the tank that held their two snails, Watson and Crick.

Dana smiled, “You want me to bring them along too?”

Alex didn’t answer. He began taking apart the glass tank from the bottom. The plastic cover, then the air filter, then the humidifier, and then Dana saw the rest of the tank from the battery compartment to the air pump were all hollowed out.

Then Alex began digging something out of that hollowed part. A Browning double-action semi-automatic pistol. He then reached into the snails’ enclosure, and dug around in the little sand piles. He fished out a clip of 9mm ammo.

Dana froze.

“I want you to take this with you if Greene shows up. Here’s the safety, here’s where you insert the magazine. If the gun jams, just remember to ‘tap, rack, bang’. Okay?”

Dana didn’t take the gun from him. Her lips quivered.

“How long have you been planning this?” She demanded, her voice betraying her despair. Alex didn’t respond. He went to the living room where Mr. Okazaki stood like a gangly tree, and flipped open the skeleton’s cranium. There was a little ziplock bag inside. Alex handed Dana the stack of $100 bills, along with a driver’s license with the name “Rosalind Tarbel” and Dana’s picture, a credit card, and a business card.

“The nearest major city from here is Chicago.” He explained, “You hear anything from me, you grab this and get to the metro transport station. The card has the name of an old colleague on it, he owes me a favour from college. He’ll take care of you if you need anything.”

Dana swatted the ziplock bag out of his hands, tears welled up in her eyes.

“ _How long_ ?” She demanded breathlessly, “After all that shit you pulled me through in Manhattan, you’re just gonna go off on your own _again_?”

“Dana, it’s not safe-”

“Do I get a say in this?” Dana knew she was being irrational, she knew how her voice trembled and how tears obscured her vision, “I just _lost_ my brother! I wanted him back more than anything, you can’t just-”

Her brother’s gaze sank. He dipped his head until the hood fell over his eyes and obscured the rest of his face. His hands fidgeted with the hem of his hoodie. For a moment there, Dana recalled the same look when he was caught by their mother, stealing for her from the kitchen.

She plopped down onto her bed next to Alex, and let a long string of tears fall from her face.

“I don’t want to-” She stuttered, “We just got here-an-and, I li-liked this place...why do I-”

Alex awkwardly put an arm over her shoulder and leaned his body against her. Dana could feel puffs of warm air from her brother.

“We won’t.” He promised, “I’ll make sure that never happens.”

For a moment there, he almost sounded like the boy who made her all kinds of promises, too.

They sat amidst the chaos of Dana’s room for a little while. Then Alex picked up the gun, fitted it back into the snail tank, and took the little ziplock bag to Mr. Okazaki. Dana’s heart sank as she pictured fleeing from her home on a metro, _her home_.

He better keep this promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get this chapter out before things really kick off for Dana and Alex! I'm definitely going to write more for these two. I keep on trying to write fluff, but it just keeps on turning into angst!  
> Help me


	4. Cake and Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok my Alex is most DEFINITELY OOC...but I don't care. Prototype 2 ripped my heart from me and I will do anything to get it back.  
> I know we have a lot of OCs rattling around, so here's a quick summary:
> 
> Joey and Colin are freshman biology majors at the community college; Petra and Fiona are juniors majoring in political science and neuroscience, respectively. They also both intern at the news firm where Dana works; Veta is a sophomore girl who's recently moved in from Russia and is studying to become a teacher...
> 
> Or you can all just imagine them with ditto face like I did.

“Don’t let this become a habit.” Dana scolded her brother, but even she couldn’t help hold back laughter as she observed her brother.

They were in the library study rooms - after the college kids began following Alex around like his own little cult, he simply requested the library to clear out the old storage container unit, and repurpose it for students. Since Alex admits he has zero eye for interior decor, Joey and Colin invited their art major buddies to handle the furnishing - the result was a hilarious mish-mash of different styles with the budget one might expect from college students: garage-sale bean bags thrown haphazardly on the floor, black plastic chairs stolen from the figure-drawing studio, a kitschy set of foldable picnic tables with bright red and white stripes, and somewhere amidst the chaos sat the ancient, mouldy couch with unbelievably hideous floral print patterns which Lizaveta insisted was her _babushka_ ’s most-prized possession.

Dana tried to help by pitching in with her meager savings, and went to an arts & crafts store over the weekend to procure two throw pillows - one black, one white, each with a small cat design in the middle. They didn’t help.

Petra came in to evaluate the artistic merit of the study room afterwards, saw the pillows, frowned for a long time, and burst out laughing.

Since the library couldn’t care less about what their _only_ staff who shows up on weekends do, Alex has complete jurisdiction over the study rooms. That doesn’t mean he gets to control what the students do, though.

Right now, Dana is looking at a man trapped in an ocean of lego blocks. He sat in exasperation in the center of what appeared to be a small supernova explosion of red, yellow, blue and green, with some small figures scattered here and there. Joey, Lizaveta (or as she insists, “Veta”), and Fiona were different shades of embarrassment and frustration. There’s something inherently _hilarious_ about seeing the scourge of Manhattan sitting dejectedly on the floor, surrounded by legos.

“It’s not going to be a habit, Dana,” her brother protested, “It wasn’t my idea to begin with-”

“It was ours.” Veta admitted, “We thought he could show us how the Renin-Angiotensin system works with lego blocks. Sodium-based protein transport chains, y’know?”

“And let me guess...you got carried away and built a replica of the HMS Dreadnought?”

The kids hang their heads in defeat. Dana bursted out laughing at the notion that her brother tried to replicate a _freaking battleship_ with lego blocks. She wished she was here the moment it collapsed, the look of absolute horror on their faces would’ve been the art this room so desperately lacked…

“Guys, we gotta help him.” Fiona reasoned, “He’s trapped in a circle of legos!”

“Alex can handle this,” Dana interjected, still wiping tears from her eyes, “It’s not a salt line and he’s not a demon.”

“You help me too.” Came Alex’s stern command, he awkwardly tried to stand up and make room for himself among the chaos. Dana sighed, bent down and began picking up the pieces along with Veta and Fiona. Once the room was cleared Alex left for the front desk, leaving a hasty “come to me if you have questions” to the kids.

Apparently they didn’t catch all the scattered lego blocks, because as Alex stepped out of the room he sucked in a deep breath and let out a string of curses in several different languages. The kids watched dumbfounded as their makeshift professor limped towards his post.

Veta grabbed Dana’s sleeves as the latter prepared to leave. “Wait a second.” she pleaded.

“What is it?”

Fiona and Joey approached her as well, the latter carefully closing the door and checking to see if Alex was out of earshot.

“We, uh…” Fiona stumbled over her words, Joey helped pick up the rest.

“We want your help. With something. A...secret thing.”

Dana scrunched up her nose. Fiona continued.

“So, er...we know that Alex’s birthday is coming up..shit. Veta, what was the date again?”

Veta whipped out her phone to check.

“I have it saved under....huh, September...4th? Yep, September 4th.”

Dana visibly flinched, “But his birthday isn’t-”

She stopped herself before she blurted out any more words. _His fake driver’s license, she remembered, _Alex had set his birthday to the same one as Shinya Yamanaka, of course he’d do something like that.__

__

Her own birthday on her fake ID was set to May 3rd, the birthday of Jacob Riis.

__

Those kids must’ve dug into the library’s registration records, or glimpsed his ID from when they hung out. She silently berated her brother for being so careless, but still felt assured their true identity remained protected.

__

Fiona seemed to ignore her verbal glitch, she carried on explaining their “mission”. Dana couldn’t help but snicker at the kids’ enthusiastic proposal.

__

“Hey, it’s real sweet and all. But I’m not sure if Alex is the type of person for a...surprise. I’d love to help, but-”

__

She stopped herself again, this time out of realization and horror. She didn’t have to think too deeply to know what an agitated Alex could turn into, even before family and friends. Then they’d have to move, _again_ , and run to a new place. And this time, _Greene_ would be on their trail…

__

She needs to do _something_ about their plan.

__

***

__

Dana saw nothing but miles and miles of rolling fields and empty open land as she biked down the frozen path. The Midwest isn’t known for sprawling establishments and industrialized cities save for a few major spots, and there was nothing to accompany her ride but the distant cawing of blue jays and gusts of cool wind. The promise of new materials for publishing in exchange for her temporary sabbatical nagged at the back of her mind, but the students’ plan outweighed her concerns.

__

The little arts n’ crafts shop fits Dana’s expectation of a “small town trinket vendor” perfectly. As soon as she stepped away from the chilly morning air, a wave of overwhelming apple cinnamon sweetness hit her squarely in the face. The air was practically saturated with scented candles puffing their sweet perfume, and there had to be more than a dozen cupid paintings and crochets adorning the walls around her. Shiny crystal lamps dangled from the ceiling and refracted a thousand little pieces of rainbows all over the room, kitschy porcelain statues and dolls scattered among the soft shadows of every nook and cranny, and from the darkened backrooms Dana could smell butter popcorn being prepared.

__

She didn’t bother alerting the shop owner, she knew what she came here for anyways. But even as Dana searched through the myriad baubles she couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of some of them.

__

A small Jason Vorhees chia pet - _who makes those stuff? And who would want a miniature psycho killer sprouting leaves in their house?_

__

Alex wasn’t a big fan of horror, but Dana made him watch her favourites anyways. They used to borrow 80s horror flicks from the local library too: _Carrie_ , _The Fly_ , _Nightmare on Elm Street,_ and of course, _Friday the 13th_. Everytime there’s a jumpscare, Dana would scream at the top of her lungs and wrap herself tightly around Alex just to annoy him, then she could practically hear her brother roll his eyes over her fake sobbing and fits of uncontrollable laughter.

__

Behind two dusty porcelain cherubs sat a small box of bunny-shaped soap. It appears to be made with brown sugar, and has a shiny, glossy finish like dark rich chocolate.

__

Alex had fallen for one of those tricks once. It was in his “paper-pushing days” as Dana calls it. For hours on end he was no more than a shadow hunched over piles of dissertation papers and amino acid models. She’d come to visit him after school, and picked up some miscellaneous gifts with what measly sum she had on her - she had noticed Alex smudging ink everywhere carelessly as he shuffled around the apartment, and bought one of those “made with 100% natural ingredients!” scented soap bars for him.

__

She remembers his bloodshot eyes focusing on her, then on the takeout she had brought to him, then to the small gift she prepared.

__

“Great, I’m starving.” He simply said, before snatching the soap from her hand and taking a bite out of it. Dana’s terrified face hadn’t registered in his brain until moments later. His face twisted as he spat out the soap, and numbly stared down at his ruined gift.

__

Everytime after that, whenever Dana visited she only saw him using liquid soap.

__

Dana wasn’t sure which caught her eye first: the hideously bright little _Dia de los Muertos_ plastic skeleton, or the hair-raising glassy glare of the moldy doll. She decided her visit needs to be cut short, just in case something ominous decided to follow her home the longer she stayed.

__

She hastily gathered her supplies, brought them over to the counter, and knocked on the wooden table top a few times as she waited for the shop owner to come out.

__

***

__

Alex had no idea how he ended up like this.

__

He was the walking terror of Manhattan, the scourge of the zombie apocalypse, and here he was - teaching college freshman redox reaction chains.

__

He waved away the last of the few kids who came for help, and watched as they giddily hopped out the front door of the library. Silence descended upon him as he was left utterly alone in a small maze of mouldy books. There wasn’t a single noise save for his own breathing, not even the steady hum of fluorescent lights above him - it was too quiet. He spun around in his chair, hoping to settle the unease that somehow crept up on him.

__

_Greene is still alive? Could she…_

__

He shook the notion out of his head. Alex couldn’t afford to stay along by himself for too long, he’s afraid of how deep he’ll sink this time. He hadn’t told Dana - the memory walks are getting longer and longer, he needs a distraction before-

__

_Before Blackwatch spots him around the corner. By then he was too terrified to move after witnessing two Gentek scientists being gunned down. He peeked around the corner to witness their lifeless bodies slumped together under a growing pool of blood. Then the soldiers spotted him somehow, their long barrels now raised directly at him._

__

_“All points, priority target! Priority target!”_

__

_He feebly stuttered out a string of pleas as lead hail rained down on him, ripping his flesh apart and searing his insides. Terror tasted like blood in his mouth._

__

_“Wait, wait, wait! Wai-”_

__

His eyes shot open. Some rational part of his brain wrestled him back into reality as he hunched over his spot on the front desk, disoriented by the nightmare. He tried to ground his senses, focusing his racing mind on anything tangible. A chair? A chair will do-

__

_-The same cheap-looking chair at Gentek’s headquarters, sterilized smell permeating the synthetic fabric-_

__

-How about the floor? Just stare at the carpet’s patterns until you-

__

- _Notice when the swirling patterns became a rioting sea of blood, sloshing at his feet as he trudged through the scattered remains of civilians and infected alike. Copper-tinted air weighed heavily in his lungs. Viscera seeping into the calloused streets and washing Manhattan a new, brutal shade of red-_

__

-Try the posters! Look at the posters, read the words! Just read them outloud to yourself-

__

_-”It’s alright, Alex. It’s fine. Look, no matter what, you’re still my brother…”_

__

_A deep rumbling from far away, getting closer. Some behemoth ripping apart everything in its way as it charged at them-_

__

Alex gave up, too exhausted to fight the phantoms. He slumped against the desk and squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to squeeze out the noises in his head as well. For the first time he realized he was _lonely_ without the nagging kids.

__

He staggered up towards the exit to catch some fresh air, grateful the wrath of a Midwestern winter had rescinded into a tame breeze. He stood outside stretching for a moment, listening for the rapid knocking from a particularly persistent woodpecker.

__

Alex never considered himself much of an outdoor person, granted Manhattan is not much of an _outdoors_ city. But in these months working at the library, he had become acquainted with some extremely tenacious squirrels, a small family of blue jays, and a small sac of spiderlings waiting to hatch. The poor wreck of a basin Joey and Colin dubbed their “birdbath” actually came to house a small frog once. It hopped away before an excitedly screaming Veta could take a photo to commemorate this progress.

__

It’s so nice he could fall asleep right there.

__

And he almost did, before startling awake again. By another nightmare.

__

_Greene had walked past him._

__

He rubbed his eyes frantically, searching for the lithe figure of the woman. In a single glimpse the fiery red hair had kicked his senses into overdrive. He spun around in a desperate attempt to locate her, only to see soft swaying shadows of tall pine trees. Nothing more. He crumpled to the ground, heaving every breath in a wild panic. _He had wanted to believe Dana’s trick of the eye, a fleeting illusion of someone that had the same build as Greene, another redhead on a date…_

__

It better be his fevered brain conjuring up hellish images to torment him. It better stay locked up in his own mind.

__

He got up and dusted off his clothes, hearing the familiar turn of Dana’s bicycle on gravel road. Two heavy grocery bags nestled in the basket as she carefully balanced the bike against an old pine tree. He watched as she cheerfully ran over to him.

__

“Hey I need to tell you something-” She stopped, “You look really pale. Is everything alright?”

__

He reached out a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, “No, just tired. I came out here to get some fresh air.”

__

Dana didn’t take his excuse to heart, he could tell. But the worry faded from her face and she lightened up a bit, apparently deciding to shove her concerns aside for the time being.

__

“Anyways, Fiona called, said she needed help with something.”

__

“Tell her to grab her books and meet me in the study room then.”

__

“That’s the problem,” Dana shrugged, “She couldn’t. Her test materials are all stored on the school system, and she can’t access that with an off-campus device.”

__

Alex huffed, “Who’s going to watch the library for me?”

__

“Ida will cover for you. She usually works the Monday night shifts but her schedule’s open now.”

__

Alex fiddled with the loose thread on his hoodie. He seemed to weigh his options for a moment or so before furrowing his brows, “We owe her a favour then.”

__

“I’ll make it up to her, you just worry about your...sciency stuff.” Dana shoved Alex down the gravel path towards the small community college, “Go find Fiona, I think she’s in B03, the biology lab.”

__

Alex seemed to have some more protests to voice, but he refrained from doing so. Dana watched in amusement as he shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked away in his usual grumpy fashion.

__

***

__

Joey stuck his head out from the library’s washroom as he heard Dana approach, “Is he gone?”

__

“For as long as Fi can keep him busy. Come on, let’s get to work.”

__

***

__

Fiona was waiting gingerly for him as he entered the dimly lit lab. He had to admit, for a community college, everything looked neat and orderly. Alex took a moment to observe the plastic anatomy model, the big endocrine system posters, and the billboard announcing research opportunities involving dietary supplements. He pulled up a chair next to Fiona, who was busy searching up electron transport chain diagrams on her computer.

__

***

__

Among all the chaos, Dana couldn’t help but stop and laugh at the absurdity of it all. The other kids seemed so _dedicated_ , so determined to organize this party for their mentor. She wondered how the old Alex would’ve reacted to everyone making a fuss over him.

__

She remembered he used to make sure she gets a chunk of that precious chocolate bar they hid from their mother, just for her birthdays. Then she would stand on her tip toes and try to see the calendar hanging so high up on their fridge. She would count the days, and sometimes beg for more than just a little bite when she felt she deserved it. The day Dana got accepted into college they ate every last bit of that chocolate bar.

__

Then he moved, the cards and phone calls stopped after a few years.

__

A hollow ache pulled Dana back to reality, she returned to sorting out the ribbons. A few feet off Joey and Colin were fighting over who gets to put up the balloons, Petra grabbed their ears and shoved them into the old couch.

__

Dana turned to look at the small pile of gifts stacked on the folding table - the hastily duct taped one was from Joey and Colin, still in its original Amazon shipping package; the elegant small black box came from Petra, who insisted on keeping an even darker velvet ribbon tied across; Veta and Fiona pitched in together, the only gift boxes on sale were the easter ones, so the box had bounding white bunnies printed on. Dana looked at her own gift, it was a small package wrapped in shiny blue paper.

__

No one said a word, but they were all nervous wrecks by this point.

__

***

__

Alex rubbed his eyes wearily while trying not to let it show. Fiona was shuffling through her notes and trying to come up with more questions. He could tell she was exhausted from studying, too.

__

“Are we clear on the NADH productions?” He asked softly, still earning a startle from the timid girl.

__

“Yeah, yeah. I got that part.” A shy smile spread across her face, “I may have overdone the ATP production calculations. I didn’t know how it just ballooned from there-”

__

Alex desperately tried to recall the social knowledge he’d been studying for the past month or so. Dana bought him a copy of _Networking Emotionally_ just so he could avoid awkward silences like this one. His mind came up empty.

__

“I mean, it’s cool how scientists can just...sequence genomes in so many ways.” Fiona continued, wringing her hands together, “But I think microsatellites take the cake.”

__

Alex didn’t react, he was still staring intensely at her pages upon pages of notes. Fiona continued, feeling a little sheepish.

__

“Hey, I was reading this paper on gene editing. The procedure was such a blowout, and the candles - I mean - the codons were totally off sequence for the gene too...haha, the head researcher got a bundt of trouble for his mist-cakes! You get what I’m saying?”

__

The last bit of her voice tinged with nervous anticipation, but Alex apparently didn’t catch on at all.

__

Sighing, Fiona took out her phone and reported her mission to Dana.

__

***

__

Dana was in the middle of setting up the flowers when her phone chimed. She whipped it out to see a text from Fiona.

__

_No luck. Hints flew right past him, b rdy in 20 min._

__

Exasperated, Dana rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration. Her brother is incredibly _thick_ when it comes to some things. She could only pray their little surprise won’t startle him too much.

__

Another chime, another text from Fiona: _u said he can’t handle surprises, should I tell him_

__

_No_ , she decided, _we’ll figure something out._

__

Thankfully Fiona didn’t ask many questions, and only gave a sympathetic “oh” when Dana secretly explained to her that they have to lessen the surprise element a bit, She left out the flesh-eating, shape-morphing, formless monster bit, hoping it would’ve been enough to get the kind-hearted girl onboard.

__

She glanced at the clock, it’s almost 6:30. The sky outside was tinted dark shades of crimson and violet, colouring the swirling clouds into an oil painting. She glanced expectantly at the small gravel path leading to the front of the library, then motioned for everyone to get into place. As Joey, Collin, Veta and Petra all shuffled into place, Dana poked her head out the door and signaled a thumbs-up to Ida, who smiled, nodded, then packed up her bags and left promptly.

__

With a final _click_ , they shut off the light.

__

***

__

Distant conversation, Fiona’s exaggerated laughter letting them know who’s approaching. A set of light and bouncy footfall on gravel, then a slower and heavier set. Dana held her breath, she saw out of the fading twilight the glistening eyes of Petra, hidden in the darkness.

__

The front door squeaked open. More footsteps on soft carpet. Fiona’s laugh and Alex’s near-inaudible mumbles. They stopped at the door to the study room.

__

_Creak._

__

Fiona pushed open the door at the same time Joey flicked on the lights. Suddenly everyone came face to face with a very dumbfounded and confused Alex, whose pale eyes surveyed the study room intensely for a few moments. Everyone held their breath.

__

It felt like a century had passed before the whole thing registered in Alex’s brain, he blinked blindly like a malfunctioning android, then turned to Fiona while pointing at the “Happy Birthday” balloons.

__

“Is it your birthday today?” He sounded a bit apologetic, “Sorry Fiona, I didn’t know.”

__

Joey and Colin gaped at their teacher, Veta snorted loudly, and Petra was desperately trying to quell her giggling fits.

__

“No, it-uh, it’s...it’s yours, isn’t it?” Fiona stuttered, her apprehension now replaced by pure embarrassment.

__

Dana emerged from behind the table, holding up a little cake. “These idiots insisted on making this a surprise, so I guess...it’s a surprise now.”

__

Alex didn’t react, he just stood there as if rooted to the spot. Then _finally_ , something snapped in his mind that drew him back to the present. His face now visibly several shades redder, he trudged up awkwardly to Dana to inspect the cake. It was a neat little cheesecake with “Alex” and a heart drizzled next to it in chocolate syrup.

__

“Uh, sorry we had no candles.” Veta explained, scratching her ears in a “tell” of embarrassment, “They only sold the small, single ones and there wasn’t enough room on the cake to-”

__

Alex raised a hand to stop her, “Don’t remind me.” He smiled.

__

“You’re fine!” Petra came up to him and ushered him to sit on one of the plastic chairs, “No one would be able to tell you’re actually 70.”

__

Alex felt like he had seen this before, well, not _him._ But someone had seen this before. For the first time, the memories didn’t feel _all bad_ \- there was a part of him that calmed a little.

__

He watched in awe as the kids went about cutting the cake and singing their stupid little jingle, then sharing the cake, and arguing over who gets the pieces with the chocolate sauce. Then some more banter that caused Veta’s face to swell red like a beetroot. Then he saw what the kids did with their space: little stars hung from the ceiling, pink ribbons left from Valentine’s Day, black and orange flowers they dug up from last year’s Halloween celebration, and a small cloud of balloons loomed over the entire room. On the table was a dusty vase he’d seen at the college’s art department - one of the still life assignments, only now it’s cleaned up and housing a bouquet of wildflowers that bloomed furiously in bright, exploding colours. He recognized _Leucanthemum vulgare_ , above all others.

__

He left the kids to fuss over the rest of the cake while he examined the stack of gifts. Dana was standing by watching him, smiling.

__

Joey and Colin had gotten him a t-shirt, with a ring of “Fe” printed on, and the word “Ferrous wheel” written below; Petra’s gift was a small but elegant fountain pen, upon closer inspection it doubles as a ruler, a magnifying glass, and a screwdriver; Veta and Fiona got him an anatomy colouring book, with illustration taken straight from _Gray’s Anatomy_. He looked up gratefully at Dana, who was urging him to open the last gift, hers.

__

It was a small bar of milk chocolate.

__


	5. Snailex

_It’s the third time this week._

He couldn’t sleep. Of course he couldn’t. Not after all that he’d been through among the flaming hellscape of Manhattan, not after the second outbreak engineered by his hand, and certainly not after catching another glimpse of Greene in his fevered mind.

Hunger was overwhelming. Usually, the locals attributed the gruesome deer carcasses and scattered bird feathers to the prowling wolves (some have even sworn to hearing their howls in the dead of night), yet he alone knew that this too, could not last. Soon the ice will thaw into muddy, soft sludge, and people _will_ find his footprints next to a pile of bleached bones picked clean.

Dana used to joke about how he should try to photosynthesize some of his energy, yet after seeing how he was too exhausted to even explain the implausibility of her suggestion, she didn’t find her jokes amusing anymore. For a while she’d visit him as he worked at the library, bringing him boxed salad from the diner next door. She’d see him hunched over his post like in his college days, bright eyes obscured by the long shadows that fell on his face. He ate gratefully, but they both knew it wasn’t enough.

“I can’t taste anything.” He confessed to Dana one time, after devouring a whole box of fresh pastries. “I can’t taste anything. Anything at all.”

There’s something else that was bothering him as well: he hasn’t been quite...himself. It was becoming more and more difficult to hold his shape together, sometimes he forgets what Dr. Mercer looked like. What little memories he stole from the original Alex swam in a chaotic jumbled sea of countless others, mixed with a thousand lifetimes. He has no idea how he managed to maintain relative sanity while in Manhattan, when he was chowing down on Gentek scientists and Blackwatch soldiers like a lawnmower on grass. It felt as if his mind was a dam that threatened to crumble under the weight of all he killed.

He didn’t want to leave Dana yet again, but he didn’t want her to flee across the country every three months. Heller and his family were still after them - well, mostly him, and the sergeant was _convinced_ that he’d survived their brutal showdown. Now with the possibility of Greene returning as well, he couldn’t bear the thought of putting Dana and those college kids at risk.

Last time he decided to go AWOL...something pushed him over the edge. He had _just_ managed to find an anchor that settled his faith in life, he can’t lose it again.

_Not after Autumn._

So with these thoughts rattling around in his brain, there’s no way he’s gonna be able to sleep tonight.

***

He quietly slipped out of his room, making sure the spring of the door handle wouldn’t make too much noise when he twisted it. His footsteps were inaudible on the soft carpet, but he still made sure to avoid the creaky bits of floor underneath. Once he was sure his movements were out of Dana’s earshot, he opened the fridge, grabbed a beer, and plopped down in front of his computer.

His finger hovered above the power button, but something told him there’d just be more headlines about the wounded and the dead, and he had no mind for that.

It’s nights like these that make his thoughts wander far too deep into dangerous territory.

_He searched frantically under the floorboards for the stash of money he’d “borrowed” from the drug dealer, still wearing the face he “borrowed” from the same person. Where was the hollow space he’d dug up for an emergency like this?_

_Autumn stood nearby with her arms folded, still in the fog with confusion written all over her young face. How could he tell her? How could he tell her that her father tortured and killed people for the mafia? No, she didn’t need to know._

_“I...Listen, I need you to leave this place._ **_With me_ ** _.” He managed to squeeze out._

 _“_ **_Leave?_ ** _What are you talking about?”_

_Fear tinged her voice, he could hear it._

_“Do you trust me?”_

_She didn’t need to hear it, she just has to get out of here before her father’s past catches up with her._

_“Well...yeah, I mean,_ **_sure_ ** _I do…” She stuttered nervously, still trying to see if he was playing tricks on him._

_“Then come with me. We can go anywhere we want.” He offered, And he had meant it, he was ready to throw the world behind for this girl - for someone who needs a second chance in life just as he did. His mind drifted to freshly brewed morning coffee, to late-night news stations and Chinese takeout, stupid carnival games, warm laundry and ice-skating parks. All that could be theirs._

_“Are you serious?” She almost pleaded for him not to be, “...you_ **_are_ ** _serious.”_

_Damn it! where’s that money?_

_“Jack, I can’t just_ **_take off_ ** _. I have responsibilities here. I have_ **_my father_ ** _to think of.” She hesitated. He flinched at the mention of her father, whose severed head and body were both lying in a bloody puddle in the cabin near his. His handiwork._

 _“But if you found out things were_ **_bad_ ** _here...the kind of bad you can’t overlook, can’t_ **_forgive_ ** _…”_

_And it was hard for him to forgive. The old man who had accepted a stranger into his lands, who had fed and sheltered him, played chess games with him...who had mauled those who stood in his way, who held flamethrowers to those he shook down in alleyways, who killed and killed in the name of profit…_

Like he was any better.

_Still, where’s that stash of money? He could’ve sworn he hid it under these exact floorboards. But Autumn had to leave with him, things were bad for her, they would eventually catch up with her-_

_“_ **_Then_ ** _couldn’t you leave everything beh-”_

_He stopped. His brain short circuited once he saw the empty money box._

_“Where is the money I put here?”_

_Autumn clicked her tongue almost chidingly._

_“Oh, Jack.” She lamented. A stone dropped into his stomach. No, don’t think about it, don’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutit-_

_“Autumn? Did you-”_

_BLAM!_

_Four shots tore clean through his muscle and flesh, ripping through him with the sensation of pain as real as when he first felt it. But this hurt more than the rounds Blackwatch emptied into him - the caliber was bigger, the shots were point blank, and they were fired by the girl standing before him_

_Autumn’s face twisted into a sadistic, cold grin. The revolver she held still drifted smoke from the barrels._

_“Once I found that stash, there was just_ **_no way_ ** _I was going to let you leave here with it. My daddy taught me better than that.”_

_She spared one last look at his bleeding corpse, where the searing hot bullets have burnt through fabric and skin alike._

_“Too bad. I really liked you.”_

That’s when he veered completely and utterly off track, and crashed straight into the endless abyss below. His conclusion seemed sound at the time - humans are vermins, worse than vermins, they are _worthless_. He was going to usher in a new age, he was going to remove the stagnate dregs of humanity and bring in a new era for all to see. He felt it was right at the moment, what changed?

He felt it was the right thing to do when he brought Armageddon upon Manhattan a second time, when he took a screaming and crying Amaya from her father, all in the name of creating a new world.

The same world that Greene wanted for herself.

Even after he came back from the dead to find Dana, he couldn’t help but realize he must’ve gone wrong _somewhere_.

He looked down at the hand holding the beer, it wasn’t his. It was soft, pale, colourless but slender, thin like a woman’s. Then the next second, _it was_ his again.

What the hell?

He tried to ground his thoughts, but they kept on spiraling.

_“I understand that I had a brother once; a boy named Alex, a boy who used to play games with me and go skating with me and watch scary movies with me. I understand that Alex is dead now.”_

Did she really believe so?

_“Give me my daughter!”_

Heller was pure, unbridled fury in the shape of a man. A man he had driven to despair by his own hands.

_“The time for waiting...is over.”_

No, waiting for what? What was he supposed to be waiting for? The end of the days? His death?

_“The Redline is drawn. Nothing gets on or off the island without Blackwatch Command.”_

Stop, that’s not his memory. That belonged to a soldier, Charles, perhaps. Stop, these are not his memories.

_“Hope, Idaho was just a....sacrificial lamb. A necessary cruelty.”_

Stop, that’s not his memory either. That was another Blackwatch soldier. He’s digging too deep this time, he needs to get out before he’s trapped in his own mind.

_“When we hunt, we kill! No one is safe, nothing is sacred!”_

_-They really would burn their own to hold the redline. He stood among an ocean of blood in almost morbid fascination at who the soldiers were opening fire on. Most of the firepower was honed in on him, but he could hear stray bullets zipping past him into the civilians. There was an unearthly cacophony of pain all playing out in full volume around him: the gunfire raining down hell on him, the wails and screams of the people caught in their fight, the inhuman snarling infectees, and frantic orders being relayed on military radio. He took a step forward, ignoring the bullets ricocheting off his shield, and lunged forward at a Blackwatch soldier-_

_-and suddenly he was on the other side of the redline, firing blindly in fear at the inhuman abomination that launched itself into the air at inhuman speed. It looked like a man, a young man in his late 20s with his black jacket flapping wildly in the wind, his cold glare pinning his target to the ground. He saw himself in the air with claws raised above his head, blood still flying off him. Then in less than a split second, before his brain even could comprehend what was being done to it, it was outside his skull. The last thing he heard was his own blood trickling out of the hole in his neck, pooling around his face like a water bottle knocked over._

_…_

_Then he was him again, angry, blood pumping with venomous hatred and rage at her betrayal. He was in an elevator, light dim and flickering. The mouldy scent of the run-down apartment building was only diffused by her light perfume. He glared at her hatefully, Karen Parker, the woman who almost got him killed. Even through the Blackwatch helmet, he could see the undiluted fear on her face._

_“You know what he can do. Uh. Goddammit, he’ll kill me!”_

_The aged elevator creaked and groaned on its descent. Suddenly, it came to a screeching half with a loud clang. Blood-red emergency lights flared on, blinking madly in the room-_

_-And he saw it through her eyes, this time. He saw his own dark silhouette only punctuated by the bursts of red light. He heard her fear as if it were her own._

_“Oh my God. Oh my God. He’s here.”_

_His heart raced in blind panic, cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck. His hands shook, was the ground shaking alongside him? Heavy clouds settled over his thoughts, obscuring all logic save for the most primal fear etched into the human brain - the fear of being hunted. He saw nothing but an inhuman mimicry of a man, hellbent on vengeance and bloodthirsty. Was that really him?_

_“He’s in the building!” He choked out in Parker’s voice._

_There was nothing more to be done. He heard his own hoarse voice worn with anger, “I know.”_

_All he could do was close his eyes and silently mouth “no” before the darkness set in._

***

“Alex!”

He felt someone nudge him gently, then not-so-gently. He groaned and forced open his heavy eyelids. There was a painful crick in his neck, and his hands felt sore from supporting his head all this while.

“Huh?” He babbled, “Wah?”

Dana was crouching in front of him, her dark eyes shining in the pale light that seeped through the windows. She still had her nightgown on, and had a little blanket over her shoulder.

“You fell asleep on the sofa.”

He blinked a few more times to squeeze the sleep out of his eyes, “Huh? What time-”

“It’s 4AM. You were sleeptalking when I came down to grab a drink.”

“Go back to sleep.”He mumbled a command at her.

“I can’t sleep now.” She said, nestling herself comfortably between him and the sofa cushions, “You were going on and on about ‘the time for waiting’, and I was worried.”

“You have work tomorrow.”

“It’s a Sunday.” She said flatly.

He flexed his fingers and found the beer can had rolled out of his hand while he was asleep, it now lay several feet away from him on the carpet. He scrunched up his nose. The beer was room temp now, and he wasn’t gonna drink that.

“What were you dreaming about?” Dana teased, making a nest out of pillows and blankets like a bird. “It sounded bad.”

“It was bad.” He replied curtly, not wanting to worry her too much.

Dana pouted, curling her legs up on the sofa to snuggle up more. “You can tell me.”

“No.”

She suddenly pulled him down by the collar of his jacket, “Alex, listen. I don’t care what your virus brain is doing to you, tell me what’s going on before you lose your mind again.”

He remembered, he _never_ told Dana about Autumn, about the old man and his ties with the mafia. He shut his eyes tightly, hoping to quell the ceaseless noise in his mind. Finally, he caved.

“I went up north after they almost nuked Manhattan,” He started, “I was looking for a place to stay, an anchor…”

***

He was at the end of his tale, cradling his head between his hands and afraid of looking at Dana to see the expression on her face. He explained everything to her, how he had fallen in love with the girl, how he had discovered that her father was a vicious mafia member and tried to get her away to a new life, and how his dream was shattered by four bullets from her. All this time, Dana didn’t speak.

She was silent for a _long_ time.

“Dana, I-I’m...I was-”

“You were an idiot.” Her voice cracked, “Why didn’t you tell me then? Why did you think all humans deserve to die? God Alex, you’re such a fucking-you’re so-”

She finished the rest of her sentence with a string of tears.

“Was it all that bad?” She demanded, “When you look into all those people, did-did you see _nothing_ but pain and anguish? Was that all they were?”

It was his turn to be silent.

Whenever he opened the memory vault, the first things to rush out were bodies floating on an ocean of blood - a tidal wave that would swallow him whole. More red than he could possibly comprehend with his eyes, and the air heavy and dense with gunpowder soaking through every part of it.

He never stayed long enough to see what’s underneath the bloodshed.

How could he? He would be carried away by all the nightmares _he_ manufactured before he had a chance to see clearly, to know the people he consumed for who they were. When those stupid college kids threw him a surprise birthday party that really wasn’t a surprise, it reminded him of something.

_A marine, 24, shipping out to Fort Benning for his bootcamp. The day before he went to the movies with his sweetheart, both wearing matching Rolling Stones t-shirts. They shared a ridiculously large bowl of popcorn and laughed their asses off at the cinema._

_A Gentek scientist who stood before his daughter’s hospital bed. The IV tubes coiling around her like snakes, barely keeping the EKG from flatlining. He wept, and talked quaint nonsense to his darling before reluctantly leaving. Going back to engineering a bio-weapon so he could pay her bills._

_A civilian this time - a young woman in her early 20s, not unlike Dana. She just dyed her hair purple, hoping to impress the new intern at her department. He was kind of cute, and too shy for his own good._

And there were a thousand more voices swirling in his mind, telling him what it’s like to _live_. He shuddered at the revelation.

“You’re right.” He muttered to himself more than to her, “I _was_ an idiot.”

Dana stretched herself across the couch as her brother fell silent. She kicked her feet up on the armrest and looked up at Alex’s darkened eyes.

“Have you found it?” She asked.

“Huh?”

“The anchor.” Dana repeated, “Have you found one? Something that grounds you to this world?”

He looked around at their dingy little apartment, at the faded and wrinkled birthday cards sent from Joey and Colin, at the withering little flower crown Fiona made for Mr. Okazaki, and at the latest addition to their snail tank - Rosalind Franklin, who was lazily munching on a piece of old lettuce. Then finally, his gaze drifted to Dana, who was sprawled over his knees and breathing evenly into their pile of pillows, her warmth seeping through the old mouldy fabric.

“Yeah.” He muttered, “I think I have.”

***

They turned all the lights on in the house to compensate for the sliver of dawn peering through the windows. Alex was fumbling with their only jar of peanut butter in the kitchen, and Dana’s patience wore thin with every _clang_ and _bang_ and brief cursing that came after. The jenga tower was threatening to topple over when Alex apparently managed to drop all the cutlery in their drawer.

“Alex! Get your dumb ass over here,” Dana ordered from the living room, “forget the sandwich!”

“No.”

She sighed, grabbed her blanket, and awkwardly shuffled over to where Alex was standing, staring down haplessly at a pile of bread.

“Jesus, Alex, how hard could this be?” She snatched the butter knife from him, and began lathering on an overly generous layer of fruit puree. She stopped to peer over her shoulder at her brother, who resumed twiddling with the frayed ends on his shirt.

“It’s still bugging you, isn’t it?” She observed, “You saw _her_ too, didn’t you?”  
“It’s just...if I survived being consumed by Heller, then Greene might’ve survived being consumed by me-”

“So what? If she found us why hasn’t she killed us yet? We’re not bothering anyone. If anything - Greene killing us would only give herself away to Blackwatch. They’re still looking for Blacklight out there.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Alex stared down at the half-finished PB&J sandwich, “What if she was _waiting_ for something? Something that can take out both _us_ and _Blackwatch_?”

He tapped the side of his head gently to illustrate his point, “Look, when I...consumed her, Greene I mean. There wasn’t much coherent thought I could pull from her, her brain was fried by the virus. But what I _did_ get out was almost a...homing instinct. Like she was trying to get back to somewhere.”

Dana furrowed her brows, “What? Where?”

“That’s the question. All I knew was that she wanted _desperately_ to go there, but I never figured out _where_.”

After a long silence that was too long for both of them, Alex sighed and picked up their plate of sandwich.

“I won’t let anything happen to us, I promise.”

Dana looked as if she was about to cry. She gave him a light punch on the back as he walked out.

“You better keep that damn promise.” She called after him.

***

“Ok, here’s my riddle: I’m tall when I’m young, and I’m short when I’m old-”

“Candle.” Alex answered before she could finish. Dana begrudgingly reached for a block on the already trembling jenga tower.

“You are definitely cheating.” She complained.

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are. Right now there’s about two hundred little secretaries in your brain running around, fetching riddles for you.”

“I disconnected myself from the hivemind.” He argued to no avail, so he continued watching with keen interest as Dana tugged perilously at a loose block. She resorted to short, shuddering breaths in apprehension as she gently nudged the block _ever so slightly_ out of its place. Then with the utmost care only a surgeon could rival, she eased the block away with painful concentration. Finally, the block came loose, and Dana grinned triumphantly at him.

He puffed up his cheeks and blew at the tower. The whole thing toppled over with deafening _clacks_ bouncing off the hardwood floor all around them. Dana stared at him bitterly in disapproval.

“Touche.” She muttered, shaking her head this way and that.

“It was gonna fall anyway. If not me, then a cockroach burrowing under the floorboards could’ve tipped this thing over.”

“No it wasn’t.”

A staring contest was inevitable. Dana always lost in the first ten seconds or so, this round was no different.

…

“So which one was supposed to be Watson? Which one was Crick?”

Dana and Alex were lying on their living room floor, both their faces pressed up against the snail tank where Rosalind and the two aforementioned snails munched away happily on a pile of stale lettuce. Alex found Dana’s distorted face through semi-transparent glass extremely amusing.

“The one with the darker shell was Watson,” he pointed to a snail, leaving a fingerprint smudge on the glass tank in the process, “Crick had a lil’ nick on his shell, right...there.”

“Haha, Crick had a lil’ nick. That’s my new rap song.” Dana’s eyes followed the shiny slime trails left by Rosalind.

“Did you know that snails have around 12,000 teeth?” Alex suddenly said.

Dana’s face twisted into an unknown expression, then as the information was processed through her brain all she could stutter out was a single-

“What the fuck?”

Minutes later they were frantically scrolling down Dana’s laptop, still digging around the internet for information.

“No, Alex, I don’t fuckin’ believe it. This has gotta be a hoax.”

“It’s true,” her brother said in his annoying matter-of-fact, haughty voice, “snails rely on their radula to eat. Some species of snails and limpets also possess a large concentration of goethite, which is an iron-bearing hydroxide of the diaspore group-”

“English please.”

“Iron snail teeth hard, diamond no break.”

“Thank you.”

“Wanna see a photo of garden snail teeth under an electron microscope?” Alex offered politely, snatching the laptop as he did so.

“...Sure. I hope it’s not that weird - _oh my god it’s so fucking nasty get it out of my face right now Alex I swear to god what the fuck was that_ -”

“Snail teeth.” He just said, baring a very similar-looking set of teeth in a wide grin.

***

They gave up on jenga after both of them realized that suddenly knocking down the tower while the other was building it was much more fun than playing by the instructions given on the label.

“This is so fucking dumb.” Alex muttered to himself as he watched Dana furiously tap away at her clicker mobile game, both of them sprawled out on the living room floor and sieged by jenga blocks.

“So are you.” Dana retorted, blinking the sleep away in her eyes as the pale morning sun came up behind the woods around their apartment. Birdsong chimed through the thick pine trees as the first sign of daybreak - the same family of woodpeckers now drilling tirelessly at their new target.

He couldn’t help but chuckle, Dana’s right. He’s really fucking dumb when it comes to some things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh I've been digging through Prototype canon to find all sorts of information, since I'm a huuuuuuge stickler for canon. Like I physically cannot write stuff that diverges too far from the canon. And when browsing through P1 and P2 materials and tryna find what canon Alex was like, I realized just how big a gap there was between the writing quality of P1 and P2, like dude's face-heel turn was sooooo bad. So here's my take on keeping the things that happened as they are, while still explaining away some of the loose ends between the games.
> 
> Leave a comment pls, it really motivates my lazy ass.


	6. Grass is Always Greene-r On the Other Side

“There is  _ no way _ that is a turnip.” Dana said incredulously.

The overwhelming scent of fresh topsoil and sweet bouquets floated through the farmer’s market. Alex and Dana found themselves wandering through stall after stall of the ripest fruits and vegetables they’ve ever seen. The turnip in question was the size of a balloon, currently towering over the crates of cherry tomatoes and snap peas. Dana reached out to touch its thick purple skin, only to draw back in hesitation a moment later.

“How do things even grow that big?” She asked, wide-eyed.

Alex simply shrugged. His attention was captured by a bundle of strange-looking circular leaves wrapped in plastic packaging. Dana nudged him and shot him a curious glance.

“Plantain leaves,” Alex stated, “cures snakebites.”

Dana couldn’t help but roll her eyes and laugh.

“Yeah, snakes, in the middle of a Midwestern winter. Snakes up and about, just chillin’ in the woods.”

“They’re also a good source of calcium.”

“Why the fuck do you know this, Alex?”

Her brother just tapped his temple and smiled a little. They continued strolling through the bustling marketplace and found themselves staring at things they’ve never seen before. Both Alex and Dana grew up among a world of grey concrete jungles, and hadn’t seen half of these products except on websites. Dana insisted on playing with a pot of mimosa that closed up whenever she touched it (“It’s called ‘seismonasty’, Dana.”), and Alex had to drag her away before the stall owner got annoyed.

But then Alex himself wasn’t much better: he found an elderly Chinese lady selling silkworms, and committed himself to staring at the little worms for what could be the rest of eternity. Half an hour of broken Chinese dialects and hand gestures later, he managed to walk away holding a little wooden box with eight little black squirming worms and a big bundle of mulberry leaves.

“Mulberry trees don’t grow here,” Dana frowned, “How are you gonna feed them once you run out?”

“I’ll just go to Massachusetts real quick.”

For once, Dana  _ really _ hoped he was joking.

***

_ He didn’t want to go to the garage sale at the end of the market stalls _ , that’s what Alex kept on telling himself.  _ It’s a stupid waste of time _ , and it’s definitely Dana’s fault that they’re here picking through some old lady’s hoarder pile of antique trash.

It’s definitely not because he’s a  _ tiny bit _ curious about the supposedly haunted piano the college kids’ been chattering about.

So now Dana’s downstairs picking out whatever crocheted mouldy old crap she dares to call a sweater, while he’s sifting through decades worth of memorabilia to find that haunted piano. If he wasn’t ankle-deep in porcelain cherubs and framed landscapes, he sure as well would like to take a pocket of bleach to the face to clear out the smell of mildew.

He shuffled to the side for a young couple gingerly searching for some baby clothes, and watched them disappear into the adjacent room. He resumed his aimless searching when something caught his eye.

…

Dana was over the clouds, she had  _ struck gold _ coming here. She stared with disbelief at the little shiv in her hands. Scrimshawed body and pommel, curved steel tip dusty but still sharp, and from the handle hung a little string of amber-coloured beads. There were swirling pictures and words carved into it, Sanskrit maybe - images of six-armed deities and fiery snakes coiled around the weapon.

She pocketed the little thing and went off to search for more artifacts. The old lady must’ve forgotten this little deadly piece was in her possession, and now it’s rightfully hers.

But first she had to show this to Alex, that nerd may be able to pull some words from his supercomputer brain and tell her what it means. She hurried up the termite-ridden stairs and shoved her way through hanging clothes and enormous decors, eyes searching for the familiar shades of red and black.

“Alex! Hey, Alex, look what I found-”

She stopped, then gaped for a few seconds, then stared in utter disbelief at her brother. Alex pulled himself up from the wooden crate and turned to face Dana, a hint of annoyance in his eyes at being interrupted.

“Alex, what the hell are you doing?”

He just made a sort of noise to acknowledge her question, and gestured towards the crate. Dana peered down to find hundreds of glass slides packed together, the dust-ridden butterfly specimens now covered in Alex’s fingerprints. However, even through the grime Dana could see the sheer number of butterflies there were: Ulysses, Menelaus Blue Morpho, Pipevine Swallowtail, Cloudless Sulphur, even some that appeared to be tropical species.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning on hauling all these home?”

He looked up almost pleadingly at her, “Come on, it’s just twenty bucks.”

She made a pouting face, but couldn’t help breaking down into a smile, “Fine, but don’t forget your other bugs.”

Alex tapped the little box lying to his side where the silkworms were greedily munching on his fresh batch of leaves, “I won’t.”

“Oh, I wanted to ask you something, do you read Sanskrit?”

She showed the knife to Alex, who examined its intricate detail with a scientist’s eye. The usual glint in his eyes and deep furrow in his brows came back, he mouthed things to himself as he looked over the shiv.

“It’s written in Devanagari,” He finally looked up from the knife, “It says ‘ ॐ नमः शिवाय’, it’s a prayer to Shiva.”

“Cool, um, who’s Shiva?”

“Hindu deity of destruction and transformation, one of the principal gods of Shaivism and a demon-slayer.”

“Huh...I, I never knew that.” Dana took the knife from him, “Good to, uh, good to know.”

“The third eye on his forehead can also shoot fire that destroys everything in the known universe.” Alex said cheerfully.

***

“How do you know this is  _ actually _ skim milk?” Dana raised her eyebrow over the brim of her cup.

“I don’t.” Alex shrugged, “Does it matter?”

“Uh, yeah, it does? What if I’m trying to lose weight-”

“But you’re not.”

Dana rolled her eyes and downed the rest of the steaming hot coffee in one go. It was warm and fuzzy and tasted faintly of chestnuts. She turned to see her brother wiping away his milk-stache and couldn’t help but grin.

He stared at her, “What?”

“Nothing.”

They stopped in their tracks when they heard someone call out from behind them. Dana spun around to see the pretty waitress who worked part-time at Alex’s library. She jogged to them as her dress fluttered wildly in the wind, a thin mist of sweat condensed on her nose.

Ida waved as she caught up with them. Dana gave her a wide smile while Alex’s mouth twitched awkwardly, then his gaze immediately darted away to fixate on some faraway display. He let Dana and Ida’s voices drift away in their mundane chatter and pleasantries, and somehow found himself walking away in no particular direction.

An invisible string tugged at his sluggish footsteps, beckoning him towards an unknown destination where a faint whisper promised strange things...evil things. Alex let his brain go on autopilot as he mindlessly shuffled through the marketplace, his mind still calling out to that place in nowhere. He didn’t even register the sound of Dana calling after him.

_ Waiting…waiting…the time for waiting…is over… _

What was Greene waiting for?

He’d left too many loose ends with Heller and his family. They’re still looking for him, trying to pump him full of Bloodtox so they could drag him back to that little morgue and take him apart. Something whispered to him that wherever he’s going now, he’ll find some semblance of peace there.

Who was trying to pull him away from the crowd and into that empty void in his mind? Why was he listening to it? Why couldn’t he stop his own feet from moving? Why-

A hand slammed down on his shoulder. He jolted awake from the fog in his brain to see Dana pulling him back by his hoodie. She was breathing heavily after having shoved her way through at least a hundred people.

“Where the  _ fuck _ are you going?” She scolded him, “I was calling after you!”

“Sorry.” He mumbled out.

“Anyways,” Dana gestured behind her, “Ida had something she wanted to tell you-”

“Someone was looking for you, Alex.” Ida popped up from behind Dana, clearly she had been running too, “Said to tell her if I see you anywhere.”

He sighed with exasperation, “Who is it  _ this time _ ?”

“Not one of the college kids.” Ida frowned, “She said you’re old friends...or something like that. Tall, slim, red-haired? Real pretty too, but had this weird look in her eyes…”

He just froze up.

_ Greene is here _ , terror ran through his veins like ice.  _ Greene had been here and she was looking for him _ . How did she know he worked with Ida? How long had she been watching him? What does she want from him? Does Heller know about her? Scratch that, is Blackwatch still after her? Why hasn’t the U.S. military leveled the town by now?  _ What the fuck is going on? _

“-an ex-girlfriend?” Ida’s voice temporarily broke through his stunned silence, “It’s ok if you tell me. I’ll just say you’re busy at work or whatever.”

“Yeah, uh. Good.” He stuttered out, “Thanks.”

He managed to crank his neck just a little to break himself out of that petrified spell, Dana was still in shock - her face blanched and her lips quivered, tears welled up in her eyes as she whispered broken sentences to herself about Greene’s presence. Alex could see her whole frame trembling under her jacket as she recalled the claws of the Supreme Hunter.

Ida just chuckled to ease her confusion at the siblings’ reaction.

“Huh, looks like she was a nightmare to date. You wanna crash at the college dorms so you don’t run into her?”

“Thanks.” Dana mumbled, her parched tongue barely forming a whisper in her throat, “It’s fine.”

Ida gave them a sweet smile before fading into the crowd. Dana suddenly felt very, very cold.

She instinctively reached for Alex’s sleeves, “Let’s go home.” She croaked.

***

“You’re  _ not _ sending me away again.” Dana protested, barely choking back her tears.

It was no use. Alex had everything mapped out for her: the gun, the money, the fake ID and even the keys to a 2008 Ford Mustang with a switched license plate. She bit her lips and didn’t want to ask where he got the change of clothes for her - they still smell faintly of hydrogen peroxide.

“Listen, Dana. Something  _ bad _ is in this town. Something  _ very wrong _ . I can feel it, and I need to get you far away before-”

“Before what? Before you almost get yourself killed again?”

“What could you  _ possibly  _ accomplish by staying behind?”

Dana didn’t want to argue with that point. She was more useful to both of them if she was safe and alive in hiding, but having to give up so much after she  _ just  _ settled down felt like peeling off skin from flesh. So she watched her vision fog up with tears, all the while the small embers of anger burned away her insides.

“What are you going to do?” She lifted up her head to meet his gaze. Pale blue eyes uncertain, afraid, anxious, like a deer staring down the barrel of a hunting rifle.

Dana didn’t even have to ask the question to know what Alex would answer. He’s going to follow that whisper that’s been telling him to go nowhere and everywhere at once. Dana just knew no matter where he ends up, it can’t be good for him.

“Come with me,” She pleaded, knowing damn well it won’t change a thing, “We can find a new place to live. We can make new friends. I can find us a new job-”

“I want to put an end to this.” He said stubbornly. A tone Dana was all too familiar with.

“You can’t. What if she’s working with Heller? What if it’s a trap?”

“I doubt Greene will work with anyone,” Alex shot down her suggestion, “Her mind is far too broken for that.”

A few moments later, he seemed to soften up from the idea of never seeing Dana again. He eased himself down into the bed next to Dana in an attempt to wrap his arm around her shoulder.

“I want this to be over as much as you do.” He tried his best to sound gentle, “And we both know this can’t happen unless I find out what the  _ fuck _ is going on with Greene.”

Dana let the gun drop from her hand and clatter onto the floor. It was like twenty years of her life just drained out of her, leaving her an empty and withered husk. She sank down into her little pile of pillows and mattress, gaze dropping down to avoid Alex.

“It’ll be fine. You’re just going away for a few weeks till I get this mess sorted…” Even Alex sounded unconvinced by the words coming out of his mouth, “Nothing will happen to you. I promise.”

_ What about you? _ Dana wanted to ask,  _ who’s there to pull you out of the crossfire when they come up with another way to kill you? Ragland isn’t here anymore, there’s nothing to fall back on. _

There were many more things she wanted to ask him, but all of that dissolved into a painful silence. All she managed was a nod.

“Don’t forget to call the number on the card when you get to Chicago.” Alex reminded her.

She hugged him for a long time before leading, head close to his chest and arms around his shoulders. Alex awkwardly patted her on the back as her tears soaked his hoodie wet. He made a noise of discontent.

“Look at that,” He chided half-heartedly, “You messed up my jacket.”

“Stay alive,” Dana pulled herself away from her brother, “Or I’ll resurrect you and kill you myself.”

“I’m not looking forward to that.” Alex flashed her a grin.

Then she was off. The creaky old bus carrying a lonely girl and her luggage off from the nightmare called Elizabeth Greene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm all done with tests and finals! That means more updates from now on :) Also, I finally thought of a plot for this disaster of a fic, so we're gonna see what happens next. It's about time we have some canon-typical violence.  
> I've been a little rusty with my writing, so I tried to at least get a chapter out before I put it off completely. Anyways, leave a comment and let me know what you think!


End file.
